Abstract:
This paper documents disparities in cognitive development- as measured by PPVT test scores- between children from high and low-SES households in two different phases of childhood (pre and post early school years) in four developing countries. Intercontinental evidence on the timing, shape, pattern and persistence of these disparities is provided. Our analysis suggests that disparities found at age 5 persist into the early school years across all four countries. However, both the degree of persistence and the magnitude of the gap varies: the main result is that Peru stands out, not only as one of the countries with the largest cross-section disparity in cognitive achievement between rich and poor (of around 1.20 to 1.34 SD) at any given age, but mostly as the country with the highest persistence in cognitive achievement. The latter suggests lower opportunities for convergence in cognitive achievement between rich and poor over time. I also find that gradients in nutritional status (as measured by height-for-age) present similar patterns to the ones discussed for the PPVT, with the size of the gap in HAZ for 5-year-old Peruvian children being twice as much as that of the other three countries; suggesting that this is a channel that should be further explored.
